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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Matrix Reloaded - SPOILERS

  
  

Page: 12345(6)7891011

 
 
grim reader
13:15 / 23.05.03
You really are just miserable

Seriously, though, where do you guys get a decent dose of fiction? I thought I had pretty high standards, having gorged myself on Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, and William Blake for the last year (as well as Southpark and Star Trek Next Gen and DS9, and a handful of english lit. works for uni). What have you guys been reading and watching to make Matrix Reloaded pale in comparison?

Also, you shouldn't get so wounded by remarks which are lighthearted, and intended to get a response and an interesting discussion going. I was simply pointing out that maybe some people had deified the idea of the film so much that no actual film could have satisfied them; and generally, if i see a film which is shite, I don't rant about how Keanu or George Lucas or whoever "owes me so much more!" Yes, generally we deserve better fiction for our £ sterling, but i feel lucky when anything interesting or valuable at all comes out of the entertainment "industry", given the spiritual poverty of the times. I feel incredibly priveleged to know about writers like Moore and Morrison and others, because their work helps to keep me going, stops me going mental, provides some meaning to the otherwise incoherent mass of experiences called my life. We have no 'right' to expect brilliant works of art to fall into our laps, and we certainly have no reason to expect the likes of Keanu Reeves and a company like Warner Brothers to provide it for us. So you thought the film was crap; thats great, I felt the same about X-Men II, so i reserve the right to be dissappointed, to this something is shit, and to say so. But at no point did I say 'Stan Lee owes me more', or 'Patrick Stewart owes me more', because I didn't make the mistake of turning them into the gods of my imagination. Remember, it's just a game; they're only marrionettes on a two dimensional screen. You can't expect so much from a doll, but the fact that we get meaningful messages from fictional characters at all means we're onto a good thing.

Also, Xoc said: Rest assured, this thread is considerably more entertaining than the fairly prosaic film whereupon it focuses.

I've been considering this discussion as part of the whole 'Matrix' experience, the same way I see Barbelith as a whole as part of the 'Invisibles' experience; at the end of the day, it's all just a flow of symbols and information. Whatever people's views of these particular fictions, I think the fact it gets people communicating is brilliant.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:29 / 23.05.03
Seriously, though, where do you guys get a decent dose of fiction? I thought I had pretty high standards, having gorged myself on Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, and William Blake

Well, it strikes me that none of those fellas write what you might call novels, so there's a possible gap right about there...

But he's got a point - where do we go to see films better than the Matrix Reloaded? I mean, there's Dark City, which has the same iconography and similarly absurd epistemology, but also Jack Bauer. And there's Crouching Tiger, which has proper wirework.

In fact, that leads to an interesting question. One problem that a friend identified with XXX and Spider-Man was that the CGI sequences, although impressive as feats of programming, weren't impressive as action sequences, because there was no real sense of risk. I got the same sort of thing during the all-CGI Mines of Moria bits in FOTR..is the sudden leap to computer animation, no matter how good that animation is, a sign for some people (verisimillitudinists?) to switch off?

Oh, Labyrinth, obviously.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
14:39 / 23.05.03
Whoa. What a shitty movie.

There are just so many things wrong with this movie, I barely know where to begin.

I knew going in that it wouldn't be a very intelligent or thoughtful film, I knew from the first one that The Matrix that the film would only offer a shallow pretense of philosophy. So there's no point in discussing that stuff, right? I will say this, though - if you're a person who went to see Matrix Reloaded and was exposed to philosophies and ideas that you had never been exposed to/thought of yourself by the age of 15, then I do believe that you are shallow and lacking in intellectual curiosity, and frankly, you DESERVE movies like this.

All I wanted from the Matrix Reloaded was some nice action fluff, and some pretty visuals. My expectations were low. 90% of why I bought my ticket was to see Neo fight a million Agent Smiths. And they fucked that up!

Pretty much every fight scene was a miserable failure, and there is a reason why. The 'heroes' in the story never appear to be in the slightest bit of danger - obstacles are placed in their path, but Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity have these godlike powers that make every fight they get it rigged in their favor from the start. In the first film, when Neo is resurrected and gets his godlike powers, it's a big exciting rush because he can finally fight back effectively after having gone through quite a bit of danger throughout the film. In this movie, he's just swatting guys around. It doesn't seem like violence, it seems like Michael Jackson video dancing. No one ever appears to be in pain, it all feels extremely disconnected from the reality of the ultraviolence they are simulating. What's the point of watching these scenes? Is it really just ballet for video game fans? Was the Neo Vs. Agent Smith fight little more than a Busby Berkeley routine for kids on ritalin?

Also, what is the point of having a fight on top of a moving tractor trailer on a freeway if you're going to ignore the basic laws of physics that would make such a scene exciting and dangerous under normal circumstances? The way they were on top of that truck, they may as well have been having the same fight on a stationary bed. I'm sorry, I don't play video games. This shit bores me - if it's going to be violent, that's cool with me, but I want it to feel scary and physical, and I want it to feel like it has some meaning. Ugh - I think of that one terrible line "you never truly know someone until you fight them" - bullshit. Such macho crap, and in the context of the film, so meaningless. We learn nothing from watching these people fight, other than that it's a boring and necessary ritual for them.

The prospect of a swarm of Agent Smiths was a wonderful idea both visually and conceptually, but what's the point of throwing them all at Neo if they really pose no threat to him at all? The only time in that fight scene where they even seem to have anything on Neo is when they have him pinned down, but that lasts all of 30 seconds. This is the point in the film when I decided that I was rooting for the bad guys (Smith, The Architect, The Merovingian, Persephone, the Twins), not just because they were such underdogs, but because they were invariably more human and charismatic than the protagonists. Not only that, but I despise the heroes in this story. Neo and Trinity lack personality entirely, and Morpheus is a pompous moron. I fucking HATE Morpheus, actually. I can't think of a less likeable protagonist in a film like this, even the shitty Anakin Skywalker from the two most recent Star Wars movies.

I don't believe that I've ever seen an on-screen couple with less chemistry than Neo and Trinity. Seriously, Scott Summers and Jean Grey in X2 seem so passionate by contrast! It's not entirely Carrie Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves's fault; their 'romantic' scenes are so poorly written that by comparison the relationship between Anakin and Amidala in Attack Of The Clones seems touching and poignant. To echo many other people in this thread, but have the Wachowski brothers ever met a woman? Have they ever been in a romantic relationship? This goes for the scene early on with the rave cut with shots of Neo and Trinity having sex - how could they possibly have made sex and dancing look any more joyless and boring than that? God help their sex partners, and please do not invite me to their discotheque.

Needless to say, all of the quasi-military jargon in Zion was tedious and obnoxious. I felt as though I was watching a shitty Star Trek spin-off for the first 40 minutes or so. What the hell were they thinking - of all the things one can borrow from Star Trek, they're going to take the dull Starfleet beaurocracy shit? By the same token, why did this world need a film with a homage to the scene in Return Of The Jedi when they're planning the attack on the Death Star?

And what the hell was with that kid who was pestering Neo? That made no sense, and wasjust annoying. It had nothing to do with anything, and wasn't developed, just dropped into the script without explanation or purpose. It just made things more confusing, as if we've missed several episodes of continuity coming into this film. The same goes for the pointless "love triangle" crap with Morpheus and Niobe. The plot did not need the clutter, and any attempts at adding some humanity to a character like Morpheus was a miserable failure.

I should mention that the second half of the film was so poorly edited and choreographed that it barely made narrative sense, but by that point, the film was too far gone for it to matter too much.

There were some bits that I liked - I liked watching Agent Smith in his scenes, some visual/action parts were enjoyable to look at, I certainly don't mind watching Monica Bellucci in a rubber dress, and the scene with Neo and Architect wasn't bad.

But fuck, what a mess.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
14:57 / 23.05.03
Surely we're talking about fiction in the broadest possible sense here. This is a movie, after all. As for where we go to see better films than The Matrix:Reloaded - if you're after a bigger, more sensual, or more wonderfully conceited piece of science fiction I think you're going to be looking for a long time. Personally, the amount of danger involved in a film's shooting doesn't usually factor in whether I think it's any good or not, that is unless Jackie Chan's involved, or it's the chase sequence from The French Connection. Were that the case my Backyard Wrestling DVD would be the greatest thing ever.

With you on Labyrinth.
 
 
CameronStewart
15:01 / 23.05.03
>>>Well, as far as I'm concerned the action/fighting was stunning. I mean, you lot went to see this gorgeous, lovely, visual feast of a movie (with, admittedly, much shit plot and acting) and all you can do is moan.<<<

Ever been on a date with a stunningly beautiful but utterly vacuous woman, Remembrax? Same principle. Wonderful to look at, but even that becomes boring when there's nothing else of value.

I'm amazed that you can openly admit the the story and acting are shit but yet still express dismay that people didn't like it. Kicks and 'splosions, for their own sake, do little to entertain me. They need to have some kind of meaningful context in order to be compelling. It worked in Matrix 1. It doesn't in Matrix 2.

I think Haus is right that using all-digital combatants goes a long way to destroy any kind of credibility, urgency, or emotional connection to the fights.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:04 / 23.05.03
Ok. I want to see the Backyard Wrestling version of Matrix Reloaded far more now than I want to see Matrix Reloaded.
 
 
CameronStewart
15:07 / 23.05.03
>>>Personally, the amount of danger involved in a film's shooting doesn't usually factor in whether I think it's any good or not<<<

He doesn't mean the shoot itself has to be dangerous - just that there needs to be a convincing sense of danger within the narrative in order for the action scenes to have any kind of urgency and excitement. Not once in Reloaded is there the sense that any one of the protagonists is going to lose, ever - not only because the omnipotence of Neo has been established, but also because we know there's a third film on the way....
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
15:10 / 23.05.03
Flux, I'm guessing that that's supposed to be the fun of The Matrix. Neo's inside a story that's already been written, which I'm guessing he's eventually going to end up re-writing again himself. It's like watching God - albeit with less personality and more skills.

Laws of physics? We're way, way beyond realism at this point.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:14 / 23.05.03
The fun of the Matrix is supposed to be that nothing important or special ever happens? The fun is a total lack of drama and excitement? The fun is in every single moment of the film being devoid of meaning?

Maybe I'm just not a fun guy. I doubt that, though.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the point of on-screen fights if there is a total absence of danger at all times.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
15:16 / 23.05.03
I don't want to speak for the Hauster - and he's bound to correct me if I'm wrong - but I took that to mean an element of danger on the shoot itself. There's plenty of risk to the characters in the Moria sequence in LotR. One of them falls down a big hole, if you remember.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
15:19 / 23.05.03
"The fun is in every single moment of the film being devoid of meaning?"

Fuck yeah. There'll be plenty of opportunity for meaning when The Hulk comes out.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:21 / 23.05.03
I should say that in most any superhero-style fiction, one does expect the protagonists to win, but The Matrix Reloaded takes this to an extreme - the heroes have no limits, and have almost no challenges beyond petty annoyances offered up by the Agents, the Twins, and assorted thugs. It's video game wish fulfillment, but it has nothing to do with drama or interesting storytelling.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
15:28 / 23.05.03
Quite right, it has nothing to do with drama - that's why the Matrix rocks. Jump on me if you like, but I don't remember a science fiction narrative at the pictures being so completely and resolutely itself since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or at least, Logan's Run.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:32 / 23.05.03
Not "danger" in the sense Kiss Em Hecate is using it. More human artifice. Somebody surfing the biggest wave in history is an impressive feat of human engineering. A CGI of somebody surfing the biggest wave in history is different from a CGI of a flower opening only in terms of how many hours go into programming it. I was thinkign not of the bit where Gandalf falls down a pit but rather the Super Moria World sequences before it where the Fellowship are running along with the endless void dehiscent beneath them. It removes the human context, which perhaps will change when the technology is good enough to elide human and CGI action completely, but it isn't at present - it's a more hi-tech version of the sudden cut to library footage in B-movies.

Now, although the wirework in the Matrix 1 is a bit dodgy at times, the fight scenes are genuinely very cool, especially the final gigantic ding-dong with Neo and Smith. It seems like Flux's complaint about the fight on the back of Optimus Prime (and he will of course correct me if I err) is that it doesn't take into account that the interest in that climactic fight is that the impossible things that Neo and Smith are doing are thrown into relief by the existence of a convincing physical context around them - the papers still blow around the tube station, that sort of thing - which is absent, and thus the scene is not exciting.

Of course, it could be that the scenes are getting progressively more stylised as the rules of the Matrix are further manipulated, and in Matrix Revisited (in which, after leaving university, where he falls in love with his friend Sebastian, Neo ends up nobbing his sister, whose Catholicism is so pronounced that she has the nickname "Trinity", instead) Neo will defeat his opponents by jumping on their heads, at which point they will squich into miniature versions of themselves and run away, leaving a gold coin for him to collect...
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:53 / 23.05.03
It seems like Flux's complaint about the fight on the back of Optimus Prime (and he will of course correct me if I err) is that it doesn't take into account that the interest in that climactic fight is that the impossible things that Neo and Smith are doing are thrown into relief by the existence of a convincing physical context around them

Exactly. I can accept that Morpheus and the Agent can do these amazing things and defy the laws of physics and reality, but why is the Keymaker doing the same thing? Why is he having no trouble staying still on top of the moving tractor trailer, or even seem scared? If they had shown the Keymaker having difficulty keeping up with Morpheus and Trinity, it would have grounded things more and made the setting feel more connected with the action.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:17 / 23.05.03
For anyone who feels the need to vent some spleen, I have made a thread in the Creation.

Matrix: REBRANDED

You think you know chicken?
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
16:24 / 23.05.03
the keymaker did exactly what he was programmed to do. He moved the plot on to a certain stage. He was an exceptional piece of software. I wrote him myself.

Anyway: What a load of bolloX, man! I hated it, I hated it, I did I did I did!

Course I didn’t. To start with;

Xelebri kicked me in the nuts.

But that’s so tomorrow.

And So is the Matrix. Still. Whoever hired Rembrandt to direct those scenes of Trinity slomowing vertically downward is a genius. And that beautiful percussion of tinkling bullets raining and popping. Total gimme-that, go-on, gimme it!!.... Liking gorging on yer fave pics from classic 2000AD. I remember the thrill of seeing new pages by my favourite artists; Bolland; O’neill; Talbot; McCarthy – this is the same thrill, I’m happy.

And you know what’s fun about being into the whole magic-technology bullshit? You realise kung-fu is a great metaphor for code-hacking; each program reaching out, testing, probing, discarding, unlocking……different strokes tho, innit; this thread makes that clear.

And the kiss?

I thought that was the ‘machines’ sampling Neo’s bits; they need the code for love; it seems to empower certain rebel carbon units….. hence the insistence for passion by belluci;

Like the rest of you, I had great fears for Zion. Three words came to mind.

Children’s Film Foundation.

Luckily, Christina Aguilera helped out with the dance scenes, and the body-plug cave-sex intercuts dovetailed neatly with memories of my recent visit to a Sado-Mashochistic Exhibition in Graz. (which was nice). The cheesiness was spread thin on reloaded compared to number one that’s for sure. Speeches to the throngs, love-triangles; the use of the word, ‘Damn’; all handled well IMO.

Spunk:

Best Superman scenes ever.

The fights as video games – makes sense to me.

The auto-critique Invisibles vol 2 style: a deconstruction of what an action movie really is. Boring to many here; me, not thick, still loving it, ta.

Queasiness of the whole fuckin predicament – still there; in fact stronger than ever. The matrix now a big videogame for definite; what the fuck is it really? There will be a headfuck in Revolutions. Otherwise the story will ultimately fail. So don’t worry.

Lovely surrealism; a white corridor full of agent smiths viewed from down low, all you can hear is the sound of fists hitting faces. Outside of Lynch, where else can I find such oddness in the mainstream?

Music was good; was that Slam at Zion?; sounded a bit like Positive Education to me; And it looked like the Arches! Cumon!!! Some fight scenes seemed to take their tunes as well as moves from the Tekken clan too – s’wicked.

Man; that sequence of Neo flying full tilt and lifting the chaps out of the black smoke and freeway carnage – fuckin wowwwww!!!!! An yeah, the samurai slice o’ van was ‘YOS!’ and to have a character as relentlessly positive and also fuckin rock hard as Morpheus as yer lead action cock is just so bloody cool.

Yeah……

I loved it.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
16:46 / 23.05.03
Of course, it could be that the scenes are getting progressively more stylised as the rules of the Matrix are further manipulated, and in Matrix Revisited (in which, after leaving university, where he falls in love with his friend Sebastian, Neo ends up nobbing his sister, whose Catholicism is so pronounced that she has the nickname "Trinity", instead) Neo will defeat his opponents by jumping on their heads, at which point they will squich into miniature versions of themselves and run away, leaving a gold coin for him to collect...

I would pay serious money to see that movie.

Reading El Fluxo's Review certainly puts the film's flaws in bas relief but I never really liked the action scenes to begin with. Seeing them in a louder theater helped, as the WB display a fairly successful knack for illustrating the strength of their competitors by things breaking. Hence the lack of drama on the truck. Nothing broke and you couldn't hear anything but highway noise.

I wasn't terribly mind fucked by the philosphical ideas of the film but I was incredibly intrigued by the way it broadened the concepts of the first one (where the concepts just left me cold because they were just barely touched upon).

I'm also down with Calvinball's complete lack of owedmanship (?) when it comes to seeing films. Naturally everyone's entitled to their opinions but the level of bile and nigh-hatred towards this film and its creators is raising dangerously to thigh-height. Having seen them in Behind The Scenes stuff they strike me as highly focused but mostly harmless geeks. They made a movie that, as much as many here may find it completely derivative (and, it would seem, unwatchable), is, when compared to its peers in action blockbuster-land, way more challenging thematically than it has any right to be.

My favorite moment, the one that makes the film good and not crap, is after the X-Box 100 Smith's fight, where most directors would just cut to the next scene, or to Neo waking up on the Neb, the WB linger on the 100 Smith's walking away, using technology not to build something alienating, complex, and a bit too shiny, but rather to capture a moment of, dare-I-say-it, identifiable humanity. This is the one "moment" of the film that I thought of, Flux, when you said "The fun is in every single moment of the film being devoid of meaning?" I get that you didn't like the movie, but "every single moment"? "Devoid of meaning?" Is that at all possible unless you're watching a blank reel of film? And even then?

[/Semantics Lecture]
 
 
videodrome
17:18 / 23.05.03
The auto-critique Invisibles vol 2 style: a deconstruction of what an action movie really is.

Ah, the justification of the Modern. Reloaded is as capable a deconstruction of the action film as The Assmaster Returns Vol. 12 is of human sexual relations.
 
 
diz
17:48 / 23.05.03
as far as the fight scenes go, i think, overall, they are much less interesting in this one than in the first. all of the ones with Neo in them are really fucking boring, and the ones without him aren't as good as the ones in the first.

i definitely think the CGI issue shares part of the blame. i've been saying the same thing about the Star Wars prequels. too much CGI makes things look unreal, and then something in me switches off and i lose some level of visceral involvement in the action onscreen.

someone online summed up a scene in Attack of the Clones this way (and i'm paraphrasing): "Obi-Wan sneaks into a conference room, where he surreptitiously watches Count Dooku holds a tense, top-secret meeting with a BUNCH OF FUCKING CARTOONS." that pretty much sums up the disconnect i feel when i'm dealing with CGI onscreen.

however, a lot of it has to do with drama, and storytelling.

as Flux pointed out, in the first movie, there's a huge rush when Neo starts to get his Chosen One groove on, because there was a real sense of danger and struggle coming up to that point.

part of that was the very skillful job the WBs did in playing with the beliefs and expectations of the audience.

it gets established in the first scene that Trinity can wreck shop with regular folks, but that she needs to run from Agents. then, when he's training with Morpheus, the hierarchy gets spelled out: regular folks can't beat them, they can't beat Agents, and Agents can't beat the One. we spend a lot of time training with Neo, and when we watch Neo train for so long, we really really want to see him kick someone's ass.

but it's not clear that Neo is the One. Morpheus thinks Neo is the One. the Oracle tells him that he's not the One. he moves in bullet time, but he gets hit with one of the bullets. he loads fighting programs faster than anyone, but he doesn't make the jump. i thought he was the One basically for the same reason i expect the good guy to win at the end: narrative convention. but the WBs are doing an exceptionally good job at making sure the signs are pointing both ways at this point.

when they meet in the subway, Neo is totally the underdog, on the run, cut off from the ship. Agent Smith is a fucking fantastic villain at this point, and you really want to see him get his ass handed to him. but the icing on the cake is the uncertainty: you can't be 100% sure if he's the One, and if he decides to fight him instead of running, everything will depend on the answer to that question.

when i saw it, when Neo stopped running, in a real-looking, dirty subway station, and turned around and gave him the little "come get some" gesture with his hand, the audience just went INSANE. screaming and cheering and jumping around in their seats, because you really, really wanted him to be able to be able to fight Smith, but you weren't 100% sure if he could. there was real anticipation and apprehension there. the movie just dared you to believe.

as much as i liked this movie, there weren't any moments even close to that as far as the actions scenes went, and i think that's a big part of what's accounted for the mixed reaction it's gotten. instead, in the first fight scene, the godlike Neo encounters a bunch of Agents and just sniffs derisively "hmmph. upgrades." and proceeds to whip them back and forth without even breaking a sweat. quite frankly, that just sucked, and it set the tone for the rest of Neo's fight scenes.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
18:08 / 23.05.03
videodrome; do you really mean what you say about assmasters?

or are you having a laugh?

I don't really get yer comment.

Anyway, the one true reason I loved this film was because the big guy from Tango and Cash with the massive jaw who beats up on our hero's is IN RELOADED!!!

Surely a sly nod at Tango and Cash's precedent by the WB's;

Tango and Cash; officially the first action movie as video game (in t+g's case, a platformer; 'play one of two characters; or co-operatively.)
 
 
pomegranate
20:00 / 23.05.03
i just saw this last night. at the end, just before the lights came up, this guy stood up and yelled, "that's some bullshit!" i concur.

*the acting was just dismal, or was it that the lines they were given were so awful. hmm...i'll go w/both.

*it's entirely too long, you could cut almost an hour out. tooooo long action sequences, tooo long dancing/sex scene, tooo long lectures at neo.

*most of the special effects were so poor, you had to wonder if it was a *choice*. they looked like video games. it's the kind of thing our children are going to laugh at the way i laughed at projection screens of scenery behind chariots when i was younger and watching ben-hur or whatever.

mistakes!!
the original has a lot of mistakes, including some plot holes, i believe. they have already begun collecting mistakes for reloaded.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
20:18 / 23.05.03
yeah...those mistakes....their just anomalies of the matrix.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
07:22 / 24.05.03
What have you guys been reading and watching to make Matrix Reloaded pale in comparison?
So we can now play cultural digestion top trumps? W00t.

We have no 'right' to expect brilliant works of art to fall into our laps
Really? One might argue that a generation expects something of worth from its artists. Certainly, I expect not to be fed a steaming bowl of fuckwittery. Contrary to your belief, I think there is a lot of good in the creative world; the fact that you express the feeling that it's a rarity to get anything good probably says more about the willing acceptance of tossed-off, ill-considered shit by consumers rather than about the artistic presentation or goals of producers as a whole.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
10:07 / 24.05.03
"So now we can play cultural digestion top trumps?"

Surely that's what Barbelith's for, with the occasional round of cultural capital Ker-Plunk just to break things up.

"The fact that you express the feeling that it's a rarity to get anything good probably says more about the willing acceptance of tossed off ill-considered shit by consumers rather than the artistic presentation or goals of producers as a whole."

Who died and and made the 'there's something wrong with you' argument cool again?
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
10:16 / 24.05.03
"Neo will defeat his opponants by jumping on their heads at which point they will squitch into miniature versions of themselves and run away leaving him a gold coin to collect"

You say that like it's a bad thing.

And, how do I do bold?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:09 / 24.05.03
Darling, I think that would be *fantastic*. If they could get Hugo to tril "Wa-tah!" at some point, my life would be complete. Although not as fantastic as the Matrix Revisited being Brideshead Revisited with Kung Fu, which I should in no sense be surprised that nobody picked up on.

As for bold - HTML, essentially. There's a section on formatting text in the FAQ here.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:29 / 24.05.03
Who died and and made the 'there's something wrong with you' argument cool again?

This thread.
 
 
AfroBarber
21:48 / 24.05.03
I liked the movie and I only have one thing interesting to say about it. Although Monica Bellucci's character is credited as being called Persephone, the Bond-style foreign villain that said 'arse' which i enjoyed, referred to her as 'Pussy Fanny'. Which in context would make sense and also be clever and in-keeping with the many references that the Wachowski's shoved in the movie. And when you think about the sequence when he introduces 'Pussy Fanny' we also have the zooming crotch shot of the random blondes, 'hot region'. Let me know what you reckon.
 
 
CameronStewart
01:06 / 25.05.03
Mmm, I'd say that's highly unlikely, given that the term "fanny," as euphemism for vagina, is virtually unknown in America.
 
 
videodrome
02:23 / 25.05.03
What was the question again?
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
10:09 / 25.05.03
We did pick up on it. It was very funny. You called me darling...(blushy smiley emoticon thing.)
 
 
grim reader
10:23 / 25.05.03
Flux, Speaking Like An Ordinary Guy, said: I knew going in that it wouldn't be a very intelligent or thoughtful film, I knew from the first one that The Matrix that the film would only offer a shallow pretense of philosophy. So there's no point in discussing that stuff, right? I will say this, though - if you're a person who went to see Matrix Reloaded and was exposed to philosophies and ideas that you had never been exposed to/thought of yourself by the age of 15, then I do believe that you are shallow and lacking in intellectual curiosity, and frankly, you DESERVE movies like this.

Ok, so all my friends who have never thought of that stuff and loved the movie aren't worthy? I'm quite glad they're being turned onto the Matrix, which is a lead-in to The Invisibles and other good fiction, rather than Jack Bauer and Batman and the other stuff they seem to be into. As you say, people haven't been exposed to this stuff; thats because they've spent most of their lives in the conformity camps we call schools. After school, they're encouraged by all the adults around them (who they quite reasonably believe to have their best interests at heart) to go into shit jobs where their life is reduced to nothing; the business becomes all. It's unfair to expect people to be able to have knowledge of any philosophy at all, especially considering the way working class kids are discouraged from learning in schools, and are constantly told that reading isn't for them, it is only the upper class kids who should consume knowledge - and thats exactly what they train the middle and upper class kids to do, consume knowledge, not use it or reflect on it. I think your above statement shows arrogance and a lack of understanding as to how well indoctrinated people are, and how well inoculated the public mind is against any deep thinking at all.

It doesn't seem like violence, it seems like Michael Jackson video dancing. No one ever appears to be in pain, it all feels extremely disconnected from the reality of the ultraviolence they are simulating. What's the point of watching these scenes? Is it really just ballet for video game fans? Was the Neo Vs. Agent Smith fight little more than a Busby Berkeley routine for kids on ritalin?

Yes, i think it is just ballet for video games fans; i think this was purposefully designed to 'read' like a computer game, just like the characters in the 'real' world read the symbols on the screen. I think watching the film 'semiotically' can uncover lots of hidden concepts, just as Morrison develops his own picture-language in The Invisibles, and communicates as much through repeated symbols as he does through the text.

The prospect of a swarm of Agent Smiths was a wonderful idea both visually and conceptually, but what's the point of throwing them all at Neo if they really pose no threat to him at all? The only time in that fight scene where they even seem to have anything on Neo is when they have him pinned down, but that lasts all of 30 seconds.

I doubt it was as long as 30 seconds, that would be far too slow in movie terms, but i take your point. However, I didn't see this scene as boring because we know Neo is invincible; I saw it as establishing just how invincible he is. The end of the last film showed he could be resurrected and do a few cool tricks, it never suggested this level of power. I saw this scene as just establishing Neo's new Superman-status, in exactly that video game ballet style. And there was a lot more than just a fight going on; there's the whole interpenetration theme of Neo and Smith's relationship, mixed up with issues of authority and reaction to authority. I'm not going to get into an analysis now, but I think there's plenty of interesting dynamics in that part of the story, dynamics far more interesting than 'oh no, the main protagonist is in soooooo much danger! How exciting!'

And what the hell was with that kid who was pestering Neo? That made no sense, and wasjust annoying.

That kid represents the cheerful kids who enjoy these things and don't get too serious and pretentious about things. Neo, on the other hand, represents that 'too damned cool' pretentiousness. Fuck, i know just how that kid felt, I was sat next to a bunch of miserable bastards who were giving me and my girlfriend hacky looks for daring to coo in pleasure at the pretty gun porn.
 
 
grim reader
10:52 / 25.05.03
I said : What have you guys been reading and watching to make Matrix Reloaded pale in comparison?
Rothkoid returned with: So we can now play cultural digestion top trumps? W00t.
No; so i can perhaps have an interesting conversation about good fiction, at the same time as finding out about new music, authors, whatever. Perhaps you're too hooked into the 'you have to fight someone before you can know them' mindset, chump, I'm trying to have a friendly conversation.

I also said: We have no 'right' to expect brilliant works of art to fall into our laps
Rothkoid returned again with: Really? One might argue that a generation expects something of worth from its artists. Certainly, I expect not to be fed a steaming bowl of fuckwittery. Contrary to your belief, I think there is a lot of good in the creative world; the fact that you express the feeling that it's a rarity to get anything good probably says more about the willing acceptance of tossed-off, ill-considered shit by consumers rather than about the artistic presentation or goals of producers as a whole.
You appear to think I'm making an argument which I am not. The willing acceptance of tossed-off, ill-considered shit by consumers is precisely what makes it difficult for artists to get worthwhile stuff out there, because the shit crowds out the market. It isn't always 'willing acceptance', either; a lot of the time, this shit is all that is available, because people aren't even aware that there's anything better than 'Sweet Home Alabama', or whatever, out there. Making a piece of art - even a really shite one - is hard work, and trying to get it distributed, especially if it contains unconventional and challenging ideas, is even harder. If anything, we owe it to good artists to get their work out there, being looked at by our friends and relatives who might otherwise be glued to 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' or 'The Weakest Link'. And I've no doubt there's a lot of good creative stuff out there, it's just I don't see it because all channels of distribution, bar a few, are totally corporate controlled. I want to know which fiction you consider good, not because I want to rip on you, but because we owe it to those artists that we enjoy to spread the word, because they're the one's giving out the signals that let us know there's still intelligent and meaningful life out there.
 
 
CameronStewart
15:04 / 25.05.03
>>>Yes, i think it is just ballet for video games fans; i think this was purposefully designed to 'read' like a computer game<<<

To this I have the same response that I have to my artist friend, who defends errors or weaknesses identified in his artwork with the statement "I know, I MEANT it to be that way, that's a deliberate choice I made."

If it is on purpose, it's still a poor decision.
 
  

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